Of the Irish it has jokingly been said by members of their own community that they love to fight and hate to win. And of the Palestinians it is frequently observed, again by their own, that they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

My experience in this mayoral contest has confirmed the belief that we blacks appear to be a combination of the two observations above.

I was, from the beginning of her campaign, a very public and outspoken supporter of former state Rep. Charlotte Golar Richie. This is not a brief for Richie, but an argument that I would have made regardless of who the most viable candidate had proved to be. I saw an opportunity for the black community to offer the city of Boston an example of polished, very professional black leadership. As the election made clear, we missed the opportunity.

What is remarkable is that 30 years after Melvin H. King’s quite extraordinary bid for mayoral leadership, the black community has actually gone backwards in terms of the level of sophistication exhibited, in an admittedly more complex political context.

It is clear today that the black community actually defeated itself by failing to develop a process by which we could discipline and organize our individual campaigns for the collective benefit of the community and the city. Then we could have rallied around the individual who was most likely to survive the preliminary election and have a shot at becoming the first minority leader of the city.

It is amazing to think that southern cities of the former Confederacy have managed to achieve levels of political success for the black and the brown that the Athens of America has failed to do to date.

Would it be too much to expect for the various campaigns of color to have attempted to avoid splitting the vote of communities of color? Was it unreasonable to ask for the various candidates to restrain their personal ambitions and consider what would be in the political interests of the most underserved communities in this city?

This is not to suggest that blacks should be any more or less inclined toward political altruism than other groups. What it does suggest is that poor communities in desperate need of electoral leadership need men and women who are willing to consider what is in the best interests of their constituents.

It was the failure of black political organizers and elected leaders to exhibit the political leadership required to craft an electoral strategy that would advance the interests of the communities they claim to serve that shut minority candidates out of the final election.

While some voices in the city promoted the freedom to let a thousand flowers bloom and enrich the mayoral debate, the bottom line is that the communities of color are again excluded from the halls of power on the fifth floor of City Hall.

It is striking that a map of the voter turnout in the city reveals that the participation of communities of color, despite the abundance of candidates of color, was again extremely lackluster, in an election where turnout was generally low.

Perhaps the exercise of early political discipline would have united minority leadership behind a truly viable candidate, whoever that would have been. This in turn might have made the possibility of occupying the fifth floor of City Hall palpably real to black and brown communities, improving voter turnout, just as the possibility of electing the first black president galvanized blacks, Hispanics and Asians across the country in 2008.

This impetus alone would have carried the day for the top vote-getter of color, Charlotte Golar Richie. Furthermore, a cursory look at the final results suggests that even the exit of the least viable candidates from the race would have improved the chances of the most viable candidate.

The noble ideal of a thousand flowers blooming is a luxury that those who have ruled the city for decades can readily afford, but for we who are the new majority in Boston, political discipline is the only fruitful course of action.

The black community must confront the unavoidable fact that we are largely responsible for ensuring, by our disorganization and inaction, that a white Irish man will again lead the city of Boston.

The Rev. Eugene F. Rivers III is the co-founder of the Boston Ten-Point Coalition and director of the Ella J. Baker House.